2007), "A Preliminary Study of Shy Males Interacting with a Virtual Female", Paper read at

This paper describes a preliminary experiment that studied the reactions of male participants to an approach by an attractive and friendly virtual woman in a Cave-like system. The experiment is a 2×2 between groups factorial design. The first factor is whether the participant experiences social anxiety in everyday life or is socially confident. The second factor is whether the other virtual characters in the bar sometimes glance at the participant or never do. 24 male participants took part in the experiments. There were 4 categories of data collected based on: questionnaires, physiological recordings of ECG and electro-dermal activity, post experimental interviews, and observations of behaviour during the experiment. Our results show that the participants tended to respond to the situation at the subjective, behavioural and physiological level as if it were real. Moreover, for the anxious group, their anxiety response to the virtual woman was positively associated with their normal level of social anxiety, and independent of whether or not other virtual characters were looking at them; however, for the confident group, there is some evidence to suggest that there was some impact of being observed. This preliminary study has been used in order to generate hypotheses for the next level of experimentation. 1